Where the Sidewalk Ends

Oscar Preminger’s tough thriller stars Dana Andrews as Mark Dixon, a New York cop with a penchant for roughing up suspects. But one night, he goes too far and the suspect dies. He tries to frame gangster Tommy Scalise but the official investigation leads to Tod Benson, the victim’s father-in-law. As Dixon is drawn into the case, he meets and begins to fall in love with the murder victim’s estranged wife, Morgan Taylor. Rather than let his love’s father be sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, Dixon concocts a scheme to confront Scalise and his gang in the hope that Scalise will be killed and Benson will be cleared. However, the plan goes dreadfully wrong when the gang surrender and Dixon is left with no way out of his murderous situation., Otto Preminger directs this film noir starring Dana Andrews as a violent New York cop who batters a man to death and then tries to frame a mob boss for the murder. When he falls in love with the suspect’s estranged wife, he attempts to return to the straight and narrow but the mob will not let him get away that easily., Film-noir drama about a New York City detective with a violent streak who gets involved in the accidental killing of a murder suspect and the subsequent cover-up, which leads to implicating an innocent cab driver., (1950) Oscar Preminger’s tough thriller stars Dana Andrews as Mark Dixon, a New York cop with a penchant for roughing up suspects. But one night, he goes too far and his suspect dies. He tries to frame gangster Tommy Scalise (Gary Merrill) but the official investigation leads to Tod Benson (Phil Tully), the victim’s father-in-law. As Dixon is drawn into the case, he meets and begins to fall in love with the murder victim’s estranged wife, Morgan Taylor (Gene Tierney). Rather than let his love’s father be sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, Dixon concocts a scheme to confront Scalise and his gang in the hope that Scalise will be killed and Benson will be cleared. But his plan goes dreadfully wrong when the gang surrenders and Dixon is left with no way out of his murderous situation., Detective Dixon has a reputation for bullying and violence. When he beats a suspect to death, he frames mobster Scalise for the murder., Dana Andrews is brutal metropolitan police detective Dixon, who despises all criminals because his father had been one. When the cops pick up two-bit gambler Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) as a murder suspect, Dixon subjects Paine to the third degree — and accidentally kills him. In disposing of the body, Dixon inadvertently places the blame for the killing on cab driver Jiggs Taylor (Tom Tully). Having fallen in love with Jigg’s daughter, Morgan (Gene Tierney), Dixon tries to clear the cabbie without implicating himself, but ultimately he becomes trapped in a web of his own making; luckily Morgan promises to stand by him. Where the Sidewalk Ends was adapted from a novel by William L. Stuart; its director was Otto Preminger, who’d previously put Andrews and Tierney through their paces in Laura (1944).